What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
SOLVED: Adult Fiction
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SOLVED. Adult Science Fiction, Space opera book, plot occurs around Jupiter or maybe Saturn?
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My deepest apologies, I'd been looking for the book for about an hour before posting here, and found it five minutes after posting here. The book name was Gardens of the Sun, by Paul McAuley
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I believe the book had a green-ish cover.
May or may not have included the term 'sun' in the title.
The plot of the book involved a background element of immortal political elites of Earth deciding to invade and conquer transhuman groups based around Jupiter/Saturn?
Possibly for reasons of conservative beliefs.
With the war being made practical by recent advancements in fusion drive technology that made the trip easier.
There may or may not have been some mention of a previous war with mars that wiped out the transhuman population there.
However I remember the plot following a scientist ?woman? from earth who had engineered hyperintelligent chimpanzees(that ?may have gotten loose?), ?and she or the chimps may have been involved in the design of that fusion advancement?
I think she was briefly engaged in diplomacy with the locals. Who used genetic modification for cosmetic purposes, and adaptation to low-gravity(secondary hearts in the limbs, ?maybe grippers instead of feet?).
However she was somewhat disgusted with their complacency and arrogance in their own superiority.
There may have been brief mention of their youth trying and failing to bypass the monopoly their own elders hold on radioactives necessary to further colonization.
They're fairly easily occupied by the force from earth's invasion. There may have been some viewpoint sections from a smallcraft/fighter pilot who had all of their limbs removed and were placed in a buoyancy tank to handle the stresses of acceleration/fit in less cockpit space.
I remember being impressed that the outer system people had developed something they called 'vacuum plants' which were described as colonies of extremophile cells and nanotech, able to grow and reproduce with local resources and energy from sunlight/an electrical feed, before being able to scavenge local resources to take their time to produce edible complex organics, or complex microelectronics, or high-precision metamaterials, or to be able to scavenge metals from the rock and concentrate them.
All with the intention that any of those would be able to be harvested.
I think the author may have written other books in the same setting in different time periods. I vaguely remember something about another book following the last human, who was supporting themselves running a ?loop-like? tramp freighter on the edge of the system.